


Un Jour à Nous

by Carnivalgirl24



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Flirting, Friends With Benefits, Idk what their relationship is here, M/M, Open to Interpretation, Paris - Freeform, Romantic Friendship, Sightseeing, Some Victor backstory for a touch of angst, Supportive chris, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Young Chris, Young Victor Nikiforov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-16
Updated: 2017-09-16
Packaged: 2018-12-30 11:42:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12107967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carnivalgirl24/pseuds/Carnivalgirl24
Summary: February, 2009. Victor invites Chris on a trip to Paris to celebrate his birthday 'just as friends'. This is all very well and good, but poor Chris can only take so much beauty in one place.Young Victor and Chris strolling around Paris together, taking in beautiful things and having lots of moments of semi-romantic tension. Victor has long hair and is a little distant, and Chris is somewhere between the boy in the Swiss meadows and the master of mature Eros hero we know and love.





	Un Jour à Nous

** February 14, 2009 **

The rug in this flat was so white and plush, Chris thought he should have washed his feet before getting out of bed. He walked tentatively towards the little kitchen, following the smell of strong coffee.

Victor was already dressed, in an untucked shirt and jeans that fit too attractively to be from a shop. His long hair was up in a towel, with a few silver strands dangling loose. He started a little when he heard Chris's footsteps, and gave him a huge smile.

'Chris! _Joyeux anniversaire!_ '

‘ _Merci_.’ Chris smiled back, and felt something swoop in his stomach as he realised the first thing he had thought of this morning was not that it was his birthday, nor that it was Valentine's Day, but that he was in Paris with Victor Nikiforov.

‘I got up early, so I went to a patisserie,’ Victor said, picking up a large paper bag. ‘I didn’t know what you liked, so I got a selection.’

Of course, he was just 'Victor' now, 99% of the time. Chris just couldn't help getting starstruck every now and then. Four weeks ago, he’d been up late on his laptop, flicking between his first-year university assignment and skating videos, when he’d got an MSN message from ‘~*Kiss me like you’ll never see me again*~’.

 _Chris._  
_Bonsoir! :D_  
_Your birthday is Valentine's Day, right? Do you have any plans?_  
_Because if you don’t, I have an idea. Let’s go to Paris._  
_As friends of course._  
_But just you and me._  
_I have never been before and I want you to show me._  
_What do you think??_

Victor had had to nudge him three times and send him a wink of a dancing pig before his mind had stopped doing Kerrigan spirals. And it was still going, even now, after several weeks of emails back and forth about tickets, flights, and tedious, unbearable arguments about accommodation (‘ _If we get a hostel, we could meet other travellers and go out. More French than drinking champagne in the Ritz.’ ‘Chris, I have never shared a room with twelve other people, and I never will.’ ‘Some of the guys might be hot.’ ‘Some of the guys might be serial killers_.’).

Chris took a seat at the small table and watched in amazement as Victor took out a well-baked, flaky croissant, a golden pain au raisin, a pain Suisse…two macarons in pink and purple, a tarte aux fraises with shiny glazed strawberries, and a big slab of moeulleux au chocolat which he cut neatly into two pieces, exposing the soft baked centre.

‘Thank you!’ Chris said, again, unable to control the huge smile on his face.

‘You’re welcome! It’s your birthday.’

‘Although, you know how you asked me to tell you how French people live? This is not how French people live.’

Victor rolled his eyes. He set down two cups of espresso and placed a candle in Chris’s slice of cake, lighting it with the lighter that came with the gas oven.

‘Would you like me to sing Happy Birthday in French? Russian? English?’

‘Japanese, please. It’s a very sensual language.’

‘Oh…’ Victor mouthed something that was probably the Russian equivalent of ‘ _ta gueule_ ’.

Chris sniggered and blew out his candle, then rushed to think of a wish. _More of you_ , he thought. _That’s all I could_ _want_.

They had a busy day ahead, so Chris took a moment before going out to Skype his mother from his laptop. She was already at work, he could see the staff coffee machine behind her. He knew she probably didn’t have long, but she talked and made kissy faces as if they had all day.

‘You will come home when you get back? I’m spoiling you this year, I’m sorry, I just found so many things that just said ‘Christophe!’ and I had to buy them, _chéri_ , I had to.’

‘Maman…’ Chris sighed. She and Papa had already given him money to spend in Paris, even though he was earning enough from competing to pay for himself.

‘Is Victor Nikiforov there?’

‘Yeah, he’s just doing his hair,’ Chris said. He gave a deliberately indifferent shrug, knowing it would get a reaction.

‘Just doing his hair?!’ She gaped at him. ‘Just…Can I meet him please? I’m going to be late, but the students won’t mind when I tell them.’

Victor was adorable in front of Maman. His hair was even prettier when just brushed, and he managed to put on the butter-wouldn’t-melt look he’d worn so well in his Junior years. Maman moved her hands up and down over her grey-blonde hair like a nervous girl. Chris took a moment to casually lean out of the frame and pour himself some more coffee out of the stovetop espresso maker, just as if he had lived in this flat all his life.

‘Victor Nikiforov…can I call you Victor?’

‘In my native country people call me Vitya, you can call me that if you like.’

‘Oh! I couldn’t…Victor, please, look after Chris if you go out tonight. Don’t let him go anywhere with a pole, he’ll spend all night showing off and everyone will be trying to buy him a drink.’

Chris almost dropped his coffee. It was lucky the kitchen didn’t have the same white carpet. ‘I should never have told you about that.’

‘Madame Giacometti,’ Victor said warmly, ‘He’s perfectly safe with me.’

-

They shared the remains of the pastries in the queue for the museum. Victor took great care to tear them into equal pieces, though both of them were certainly full by now.

Chris couldn't help wondering who would be the first to crack and admit wasn't normal to be doing this kind of thing on Valentine's Day, just as friends. That said, things was still far from romantic, as not ten minutes after they had entered the Musée D’Orsay, he found he had completely forgotten Victor was there, and wandered off alone.

He decided to act like the student he was supposed to be. I like to see emotion in art, he thought, I like to see movement. He found one of his favourites, ‘La Danse’ by Carpeaux, and admired how it seemed to have exploded out of its original block of marble.The flowers falling to the floor, the tired but euphoric smiles on the dancers’ faces, it looked like they could start again at any moment. He wanted his programmes to be like that. Drawing people in, in one ecstatic whirl, climaxing in…he shivered, realising he was getting away from the intellectual territory here.

He found Victor two floors up, hypnotised by a Renoir painting of a Montmartre guingette. The colours were as vivid as the brightest creations of summer, but the really striking thing in the painting was the sunlight itself, dappled against the ground and the clothes of the dancers.

‘You spend hours and hours on a programme, and then it passes like a burst of light,’ Victor said, without turning his head.

Chris moved from foot to foot beside him, eyes moving between the painting and Victor.  
‘They do live on, in a way. I mean, yours are more recorded than any in the world, probably any in history.’ He himself didn’t know whether he was saying that to be kind, or out of a little envy.

‘But for me they pass so quickly,’ Victor said. ‘It used to feel like…like enough, but it doesn’t anymore. It never does.’

Chris nodded. ‘I always want to inject more…’ He made a fist. ‘Fire, into mine. I feel like it needs more raw passion. Without that, I haven’t given my whole self to it.’

This put a spark back into Victor’s eyes, and they turned away from the painting.

‘When you say, raw passion…’

-

They walked a few streets away from the museum to find somewhere for lunch that wasn’t overpriced or full of tourists likely to recognise them. In the end, they took a table in the corner of a quiet bistro with a traditional menu, and started with bowls of deep brown onion soup, with croutons coated in golden cheese that formed satisfying strings when cut with a spoon, accompanied by tiny – or so they joked – glasses of dry red wine. They found a couple of magazines, and conversed on the financial crisis and its effect on the Euro (which neither of them knew much about), history of art (which Chris was currently studying) and which European country had the best sense of humour (which Victor was currently studying, if talking to other figure skaters counted, and had concluded it was definitely Russia).

Chris relaxed back in his chair, pleasantly buzzed. It had all been very civilised so far, as far as birthdays went. Most years since he was a child, he had celebrated with a spot of luge. He wondered if a similar rush was likely to come along for him. If it didn’t, he was very content all the same. If it did…

As he thought about this, he started to look closer at the photographs on the wall above Victor’s head. There was something familiar about them.

‘Is that Pierce Brosnan?’  
‘What’s that?’ Victor asked. ‘Would you recommend it?’  
‘Yeah…and that’s our waitress. And there, in that photo, that’s her with Marion Cotillard.’  
It dawned on them in that moment why everyone who had served them had been unusually nice and keen for French waiting staff.  
Chris grimaced. ‘We tried.’

Many photos later, they made their excuses to leave. Chris took his cues from Victor and said they had to get back to practice; fans loved hearing that, it made them feel like they were close to the action.

‘How long do you think it will be before the Internet starts rumours that we’re dating?’ Chris asked, once they were a few metres out of anyone’s earshot. ‘Half an hour? An hour?’

‘What do you mean “starts”?’ Victor replied, switching to English as an easier language to be deeply sarcastic in.

‘The photos will be on Facebook in no time. My friends will ask why I haven’t changed my relationship status yet.’

‘Oh, Facebook,’ Victor said in the same vague tone he had recently used to describe European politics. ‘I’m not really interested in that kind of thing.’

-

Still Victor wasn’t saying anything. Chris was pretty convinced at this point, despite the glass of wine loosening some knots inside him, that he himself wouldn’t either. So what if it was Valentine's Day? For anyone not in a couple, it was just a day to relax and chill, and make the most of one of the most beautiful cities in the world. With, as he thought over and over again, one of the most beautiful people. During competitions, Victor usually had the opportunity to go off and do over his hair and powder his face whenever he felt the need to, but here, without all that…with his natural skin tone showing through on his chin where his skin was a little dry, with red wine stains on the inside of his lips, with his hair getting gradually looser…he was downright angelic. Chris felt an uneasy weightlessness in his arms and legs, like he was eleven years old again and getting paired up with his crush at skating practice.

They crossed the river to the Jardin de Tuileries, where, if you headed westwards, you could see the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, Place de Concorde and the Grand Palais all at once. Though Chris had been to Paris a few times with friends, and told himself every time that he was going to do something that was not cliché, not overtly touristic, he still got a huge sense of satisfaction from seeing the monuments, and even more when he could bring someone who had never seen them before. Even when the skies were so grey they would look dull or even barely visible in the photos, this only helped Chris to feel like they had this place to themselves.

‘That’s it. _Magnifique_ ,’ Victor said as Chris posed for a picture, moving around with the camera like a paparazzo. ‘And the Eiffel Tower looks good too!’

-

Sightseeing was followed by a visit to some of the designer shops that lined the nearby Rue de Rivoli, and Chris picked out some new jeans for their evening out. This took some time; it was not easy to find jeans were tight enough to be flattering, flexible enough to dance the way he wanted to, and anything enough to please his self-appointed wingman.

‘The second ones,’ he said, of a pair of jeans Chris had tried on. ‘They’re perfect. They’ll get you a date for Valentine’s.’

‘I tried some like these in that other store, and you said…’

‘The pockets,’ he interrupted. ‘You need small pockets.’

‘Why…’ Chris turned slightly away from the mirror. ‘…of course. My derrière. Why, Victor.’

‘You didn’t even think of the pockets, did you? Amateur.’

Chris burst out laughing. 'All this time I just thought of them as a place to put my keys.'

Victor nodded absently. He ran his fingers through a strand of his hair. ‘Chris? What are French guys like?’

‘Uh…’ This was the kind of conversation he had had plenty of times at university, over a glass of wine or in front of a DVD. It was slightly less easy to have while walking up and down a department store fitting room. ‘My friends tell me they're very intense. Like, fast, but serious. At least, my friend dated a French guy who sent him romantic texts every day, you know “I’ll die without you”, “You are the sun that wakes me in the morning.”’

‘Oh.’

They had a moment of silence then, of the kind people have when they realise what they’re sharing the same quiet, intense desire.

By the time they were out, Chris realised the afternoon was fading, and his energy was diving. Victor was also losing concentration, despite his best efforts to keep up with Chris, and kept absently looking through the photos on his camera.

‘There’s a place in the Latin quarter that does a nice hot chocolate,’ he suggested, tentatively touching Victor’s arm. ‘Unless you’d rather go back…’  
‘If a Swiss says it’s good hot chocolate, clearly I must have it,’ Victor said, putting his hand over Chris’s. Chris’s heart gave a very solid jolt, as if to let him know his body was not tired at all, just on standby. Save yourself for the Parisians, he thought.

They crossed the river, past Notre Dame to the students’ quarter, a zone of cris-crossing streets full of restaurants, bars and cheap bookshops. Chris had never known his way around here very well, despite the fact he came here nearly every time he went to Paris with family and friends. He usually just wandered until he ended up somewhere he recognised. But they eventually found the café with the good hot chocolate, and drank their tiny takeaway cups in the entryway of a jazz piano bar, which was already playing in the late afternoon.

In Chris’s head, they were supposed to find their way back to the river to watch the sunset over the bridge by Notre Dame, but his meandering took them well away from there and towards the Jardin de Luxembourg. Chris wasn’t that fond of this park; he was always turned off by parks that didn’t let you sit on the grass, like the grass was waiting for VIP butts to sit on it. He didn’t want to in the middle of February, but that was beside the point. But it had a wide open view of the sky, and it was quiet.

As much as Chris’s feelings rebelled against a park that only existed to look pretty, the picture was undeniably very pretty. Opposite the Palais de Luxembourg was a large pond, and small children in brightly coloured winter coats were playing with boats on the water. They leant against the edges and watched their craft with the steely concentration of navy generals, while their parents smoked, chatted and flipped through magazines in the chairs around the pond.

'I've been here before,' Victor suddenly said.

'I thought you said you hadn't?'

'I thought I hadn't. But I remember this place. I remember the yellow earth all over my shoes, and this pond with the chairs. I couldn’t remember where it was before, there are no parks in St. Petersburg like this. It must have been here. I don’t remember if my parents let me have a boat. I think they would have.’

The small smile on Victor’s face was different to any Chris had ever seen. Or perhaps it was just that he was seeing Victor’s face with a new awareness that it had come from somewhere; that there were people somewhere with Victor’s ice blue eyes, high cheekbones and delicate pointed chin. Without thinking, he said;

‘I’ve known you a long time now, and that’s the first time I’ve heard you mention your family.’

Victor’s smile disappeared, and he looked at Chris intently for a second as if he needed to make sure he really did just say that. Chris lowered his eyes, longing suddenly for a time-machine to take him back ten seconds.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to…like, you can talk about whatever you want, you -’

‘I don’t really talk about them to anyone,’ Victor interrupted. ‘There’s nothing to say. I do _have_ a family. I know there are rumours that I was made in a laboratory to bring glory to Russia. In fact I was made in a boarding school. Which is more or less the same thing.’

They walked, away from the clusters of people but not in any particular direction. The cold air was finding its way into the gaps between Chris’s coat and scarf, but he ignored it.

‘Russia was a different place when I was born,’ Victor said. ‘But anyone could see it was changing, including my father. When I was very little, he went away for a couple of years to work, and I stayed home with my mama.’

He glanced back towards the children. ‘I wish I could remember those years with my mama. I think they must have been nice.’

‘But what I do remember is, one day my father came home, and he had a car. I thought it was amazing! I had never even been in a car before, nobody had one. And, something I didn’t understand at the time was, it was a Western car.’

It took Chris a second to realise the full significance of this. ‘Oh.’

‘It turned out he made some good investments as the Soviet Union collapsed. Very good investments.’

Chris couldn’t help a look of surprise, and Victor smiled.

‘You know how these things go, you’re Swiss.’

Chris shrugged awkwardly. His dad was a middle manager in a climbing equipment company, and Maman was a school teacher. They didn’t have much contact with that particular side of Swiss life.

‘At that point my father wanted to do something more for Russia, something to bring the new Russia closer to the rest of the world. Naturally he thought of sport. He wanted me to do ice hockey. My mama wanted me to do ballet. Figure skating was their compromise. They encouraged me, and they paid a lot for my lessons, but I still don’t think they expected me to be as good at it as I was. They realised….that I could be one of the best investments they had ever made.’

The sun was starting to set now, platinum against the grey winter clouds. The very air felt heavier, as if the world was a tired worker packing up for the day.

‘Everyone told them to send me to boarding school to train, and so they did. And suddenly figure skating was not just my hobby after school, it was three hours a day, with ballet for two hours. More at weekends. I got very sad there, very homesick, and I was not so motivated to train so they…told me it was better not to write to them so much. When I was twelve or so, they made me move in with Yakov and Lilia during the holidays, and…well, the rest is history, as they say. By the time I was sixteen, I never saw them outside of competitions. And now, I don't even see them then.’

‘They’re very nice,’ Victor said in a slightly louder voice, though Chris had not said anything to imply that they were not. ‘It’s just…they are part of the past now.’

Chris thought of the first time he’d spent a night away from his parents, aged eight, for a novice competition in Milan that they couldn't come to because of work commitments. He’d been profoundly aware, as he tried to sleep in that strange bed, that nobody there loved him, and maybe nobody would help him if something terrible happened. He couldn't imagine living the whole of life like that. How the days and nights would stretch out, like days spent in bed sick or injured.

He racked his brains for a mature, considered way to say it, but he knew the time to say anything at all was getting away from him, and so he blurted out,

‘I’m not going to claim I know why they don’t come and see you, but I know they still support you. I don’t see how anyone could watch your skating and turn away from you. Especially if they loved you.’

He didn’t look back at Victor for a second, because he had no idea how he was going to follow that up. When he did, he was smiling neutrally, and breathing on his bare hands. He looked just like his old self again.

‘…What do you want for dinner?’ he asked.

-

There were a few bars near their flat, but during the day it had been hard to tell what kind of vibe any of them had. Chris chose an understated look, combining his new jeans with a beautifully comfortable polo shirt with three stripes, the top being red. He looked great in red, it made his hair look golden rather than yellow, and there was no better way to start your next year of life than with golden hair and great looking legs.

As for Victor, who had spent all day in an overlarge old knitted jumper with a snowflake motif, he emerged from his room in a tight Prada top that emphasised his chest and shoulders in such a way that Chris thought he needed throw that snowflake jumper in the Seine immediately. And he said so.

‘Weren’t you at Turin? It’s Team Norway gear. It was…what you call…a goodbye present.’

Victor’s eyes softened as he said ‘goodbye present’, and Chris suddenly wished he could throw the snowflake jumper into a fjord instead.

They went into the first bar that appealed to them when they stepped out, a roomy place with the atmosphere of a 1980s artist squat, but with more plants and a shiny bar. The night was young, but there were still plenty of people on the dance floor, and the music was sultry. Even though he’d been competing for a while now, Chris always got a certain kick out of going out to normal bars with other skaters, drinking the cheapest brands and dancing that little half-mambo, back and forth shuffle on the toes that everyone did, instead of what he was actually capable of. He felt he was incognito. He was. Victor, or Vitya, put an arm around him and leaned in to speak in his ear, so close Chris could feel the chill on his lips from his vodka and ice.

‘Happy Birthday!’

Chris downed his drink and looked around. Everyone there seemed happy, genuinely, recklessly happy, reaching out their hands to each other, some to caress, some to simply circle each other in time with the music. It was his favourite statue again, brought to, or back to, life. He leant against Victor.

‘This was a great idea! Thank you.’

‘I have another great idea,’ Victor said. ‘Do you think French DJs do requests? We should ask for Madcon!’

‘I don’t know, this doesn’t seem like the kind of place…’

‘You love that song! I’ll be right back,’ Victor said, and took a step back from Chris, keeping his eyes on him for as long as he could without walking into someone, then disappeared into the crowd.

Ten minutes went by, and Chris figured Victor was getting them more drinks. Then twenty minutes. He scanned the room for a silver head above the average height, and didn’t see one. Perhaps there was a long wait. Then it was forty minutes. The DJ did not play the song.

Victor was a beautiful person amongst a city full of his kind. It was obvious what had happened. Chris realised he wasn’t listening to the music any more, just moving back and forth, and he thought about going back to the bar and getting something long and thirst-quenching when heard a voice as attractive as cold wine on a summer’s night say in, ‘Is this your first time in Paris?’

Chris replied with deliberately rapid French. ‘Ahhh….Non. La cinquième, peut-être.’

‘Are you…Italian?’ The man asked. His cheek was almost against Chris’s, smooth and radiating warmth. He was a little older, perhaps mid-twenties. His skin was flawless, his smile classically handsome, and he had hair like a 90s heartthrob, with long sides that accentuated his cheekbones. Chris quickly realised the guy was everything he found attractive in one.

‘I’m Swiss.’

‘Sorry,’ the guy said. ‘Didn’t mean to offend. I’m from Paris myself. I’m always curious to speak to tourists! What is it that brought you to our city? Love, romance?’

‘Actually it’s my birthday today.’

‘Really! Then you must let me buy you a drink. You don’t intend to stay on beer all night, do you?’

‘Well, thanks! I’m Christophe.’

‘Antoine.’

More people had arrived and the space was filling, but it felt to Chris like the music was for them alone. He just had to move with it, give it what it wanted. He swayed his hips a little, took a few steps in the tiny space he had. Something he hadn’t known was anchoring him down lifted, and he moved faster, snaking his hands down his thighs, forgetting anyone could be watching him, forgetting he was meant to be pretending to be someone with normal dance skills.

Antoine said something in slang or possibly another language altogether, and his eyes looked Chris up and down with a mixture of astonishment and gung-ho lust.

‘You…’

‘Dancing is a hobby of mine,’ Chris shouted over the music, grinning to himself.

Within what felt like minutes, they were out on the terrace surrounded by smokers kissing like it was an Olympic sport. It was true what his friends had said about French guys; Antoine didn’t hold back, his muscular thigh pressing close between Chris’s, his fingers pressing so tightly into his hips they would leave bruises in the morning. Chris was only just balanced on the railing, and each time he almost slipped he moved closer to Antoine until he could press muffled, sloppy kisses to his neck. At that moment the music changed, and Chris looked up, distracted.

_Ooooh…put your loving hand out, baby. I’m beggin’…_

‘My friend Victor requested this song.’

‘Did he? Is Victor a dancer as well?’

He had a good French accent, but he said the word ‘dancer’ like it began with a ‘T’. Chris sighed and placed two hands gently on Antoine’s shoulders.

‘You didn’t cut your hair? You didn’t cut your hair in the bathroom of a French bar? Victor, please. You’re going to murder me.’

Victor sighed and turned his head slightly to the side. ‘Just about four hundred pins. I do it all the time at home. Georgi and Anya say it makes me look like a different person.’

Chris laughed, partially out of sheer relief. ‘It does, until I look at your _face_. Why are you doing this?’

‘You said you wanted a French guy. You wanted intense. And I considered that meant, not me. But I’ve been thinking about you all day and so I…thought I would try not being me. The trouble with being ‘Victor Nikiforov’ is…everyone already knows who ‘Victor Nikiforov’ is.’

There was a gust of wind, and Chris suddenly felt rain on the back of his neck. It was freezing, but he could feel heat radiating through his whole body. He reached a hand to the back of Victor’s head, and applied gentle, flickering caresses until he found one of the pins, then tugged it out. The long silver hair fell over Victor’s shoulders, unsettled and temporarily blocking one of his eyes.

Victor fixed him with his free eye and pouted. ‘How dare you.’

Chris beamed. Just like that morning, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. ‘Maybe I want to get to know Victor Nikiforov better.’

He leaned in again and kissed him as he had always wanted to kiss Victor, intensely, possessively, telling him with his lips how much he had always wanted him. He had wanted this longer than he had wanted a gold medal, and he’d wanted a gold medal a long, long time. He felt Victor’s lips form into a smile against his. Chris closed his eyes, and absorbed every nanosecond of the feel of his lips as he pulled away.

‘Hmm, _Joyeux Anniversaire_ , Chris.’ Victor said, tossing his hair back and fully straddling Chris’s lap. He wrapped his arms around him to prevent him from falling back. The rain was starting to pour and their clothes began to cling. They grasped each other's hands in a silent agreement to run as fast as they could back to their flat. Chris saw a sparkle in Victor’s eyes, and thought of all the promises it might contain.

_‘Joyeuse Saint-Valentin, Victor.’_


End file.
